Market control

So i have been making pretty good gold with alchemy. The only trouble has been consistency of prices.(morons undercutting for 100 gold. I just buy and relist their 3 flasks). Anyway, for the last few days i have been thinking about ways to improve this and i think that (on my server) i can stabilize the flask market at least. Since every flask requires a lotus and lotuses are always 100-125 gold on my server I think I will just buyout all lotuses at all times under,say 250 gold in order to force the flask prices up. Thus keeping flask prices near 300 gold.

There will always be under cutters etc but i can deal with them. The other problem i see, is that people may stop buying flasks if they cost too much. I dunno. Maybe an experiment to try i guess.

I know its basic market control strat. I just wanted to run it past some other AH gurus.

This is not vanilla anymore, so if you try to enforce control over a market with so many people on it, get the time or the tools to expend all your day infront of the AH and be ready to accept some losses (if you are doing it for fun, you wouldn't mind anyway), unless your server is relatively small.

I wasnt very clear about what im trying to ask here. Im looking to start discussion about market control in todays WoW.

Is it worth the effort?
How do other auctioneers do it?
Success and failure stories
Which particular items or markets do you try to control?
Is market control even possible today?

Also I would prefer nobody disclose which server you are refering too. People put a lot of effort into auctioneering and we dont want to undo any of that work by giving up secrets or strategies. Its also not relevant to the conversation as we are only discussing the concept of market control.

If gems market is good enough you can always turn your excess lotuses to gems and sell them, controlling the flask market in the process. But that is if there are not too many lotuses I guess. On my server flasks go for 30g, lotuses for 25. No point in controlling anything.

You could try that, I suppose. Keeping the AH near-empty of any lotus worth buying would make it hard for the new guy to think he could turn a profit on 3 flasks. There's also the fact they could be getting their lotus elsewhere, and your investment wouldn't even affect them and they would still keep posting at 200g or whatever just to move them.

wasnt very clear about what im trying to ask here. Im looking to start discussion about market control in todays WoW.

Is it worth the effort?
How do other auctioneers do it?
Success and failure stories
Which particular items or markets do you try to control?
Is market control even possible today?

1. In theory if you can control a market you can dictate the price. However it is very difficult to control a mainstream market these days but that is server dependant.

i) Can I control supply side? That will mean you buying up all lotus and flasks. You have no idea how many there are out there. I would just keep undercutting you, so it then becomes a war of attrition. If you keep buying me out then I keep selling and herbing making a nice profit off you.
ii) Can I control the demand side? Depends on server and price. At some stage if you raise prices too high then people will just farm and make theor own leaving yours unsold.

There are several possible weak points in your market control strategy. MOP specific is that players can grow their own lotus and theres nothing you cna do about that.
Another flaw would be you shoulnt underestimate what ah players or even botters carry stock. They might have thousands of lotus ready to go.

The best strategies should have a long term aim or short / medium term profit. Controlling an unprofitable market isnt cool, unless you have some idea what you wnat to do after.

Btw you have the worng attitude when you call people who undercut you by 100g morons. Your strangehold on a market may mean they have no choice. They are all part of the rich variety of players and you as an aspiring pro need to work with it.

Market control is possible for some of the time depending on competition, but you also need to get smart and think why you need it. The ultimate aim is usually to make gold unless ofc you just wnat to destroy others profitability. I would think I have pretty decent influence in the market along with a few ohers, but it all boils down to how mych effort you wnat to put in. You will find if botters get removed then a lot of comeptition will vanish as people rely on them for mats.

I think you can Influence todays wow market. However i think if you attempt to control it you will almost always fail and end up taking small to huge losses. So i would suggest to not go all balls out and just attempt to influence the market. Dumb undercutters are easy to deal with. You just buy them out over and over again. It all depends on who has more gold when it comes to undercutters. If you have more gold than they do stock. They are easy to deal with. In which 9x out of 10 you will have more gold than they do stock.

The morons undercutting your flasks for huge amounts are the same morons that farm mats and don't account for the opportunity cost of posting crafts below mats prices.

You might decrease the supply slightly by completely controlling key points in supply, but the more you buy out something, the higher the price will be. This will increase your overhead in the long run.

You can also easily get stuck with a bunch of flasks that you bought at a low profit margin and not be able to sell them all. When you have 1000 flasks on hand, will you really want to continue buying loads of herbs to craft more flasks?

This kind of market manipulation can work out on really small population realms, but not really anywhere else, and not if someone wants to compete with you on flasks as badly as you want to control flasks. I think you'd make more gold for less effort by simply diversifying.

I love people who try to control the market, I've made a few hundered thousand gold on gems by people trying to reset the market. It's great!

haha, done it many times. posting stuff for the right price (undercutted) and then the one trying to control buys it all up which is the good moment for me to post more.

flasks is too big a market to control for normal populated servers. I controlled a few markets, but the gain wasn't big (500% but didn't sold that much after all), it was however really nice as it was a new server and had no gold and this way i was able to buy my epic flight skill as soon as i dinged. Most often were rare mats that were needed for levelling profs that are not worth to farm yourself. However, I don't think that is still possible with the revamped profs etc...

You need to determine the throughput for flasks on your server. This may work for a small period but will always default back. I soak up all the low cost flasks during the later week and on Sunday/Monday. They *all* sell on Tuesday and Wednesday when raid resets occur.

If you're buying up resources and don't have the market to sustain them, you'll be stuck with a lot of worthless stock.

@marema A smart resetter is going to have a handle on your ability to sink the market. I've gone through a few days of eating up all the ghost iron on my server and the casual shufflers are starved at the source. The prices naturally rise or can be hard reset if desired. This happens even on a large/mature server. I've gone multiple days purchasing over 2500 stacks and even the farmers strain to keep up. The price goes high, but the profit mimics it. The major problem I encounter is mailbox management. Be warned, the price/stock will return very quickly if you don't keep it up.

This kind of market manipulation can work out on really small population realms, but not really anywhere else, and not if someone wants to compete with you on flasks as badly as you want to control flasks. I think you'd make more gold for less effort by simply diversifying.

Nice summary.
I used to be able to control the market during TBC on my old (low pop) realm for Clefthoof leather. I knew I can sell it for about 10 gold a piece, because I did just that, all the time, unless someone undercut me brutally. So I made it a habit of mine to buy them all out constantly and re-list em with an alt. It worked like a charm, because the supply total was rather limited. Would it still work today? I don't believe so.
The times have dramatically changed. Back then, few people had any auction house add-ons at all. Nowadays almost everyone has one. And on top.. Back then, Auctioneer was the Mercedes of said add-ons. Today, every other player uses add-ons which can screen hundreds of auctions against the competition, cancels them if need be, and relists them again, in basically no time at all. What took hours back then, takes but a few minutes today.
Let alone the amount of people trying to play the AH today, compared to back then.
It may of course still work to play the AH to some degree, and to make nice profits that way. But unless one plays a niche, which has little suppliers, one can easily lose a lot of gold nowadays. The risk got significantly higher.

I have only ever controlled one market and that was carrots on FFXI. Carrots were used in the raising and training of Chocobos and were one of the few markets that the product was consumable. Imagine if you got into smithing but once someone bought and used a shield they could resell it on the auction house when they out leveled that shield? Yeah pretty much every piece of gear could be resold making the market finite and constantly in decline.

What I did to control the market.
I created 5 alts and mastered the times to plant, feed and harvest carrots giving me a massive supply of carrots every week.
You could set your character up as a vendor that people could buy from, so I sat in front of the chocobo stables, which were not far from the auction house but people too lazy to walk that far would pay my higher prices.
I would have 10 stacks of each type of chocobo food on me, even greens but I would only list 2 stacks of each type to make it look like I didnt have much, trick was to have enough on sale to cover the days sales but not to have so much that it looked like I had a lot. If I had a lot someone would drastically undercut me.
I would watch for what times of day my competition would check my prices and relist theirs, and then wait for them to reset their prices and go afk, then I would reset my prices 1 coin lower than theirs and go back to selling.
If I had an annoying competitor I would wait until the time when they would check my prices and drop my prices of 1 stack way down to just 1 gold higher than I would get for vending my carrots, wait for them to go lower than me and then buy up their entire stock and vendor it out and then reset my prices to my usual high. Thus it cost me nothing to get rid of my competition. I would only risk the loss of a few carrots, not my entire stock and no one was smart enough to figure out what I was doing.

Typically a whole stack of 20 sold for 124 silver, and I was selling each carrot for 1,500 gold. The auction house sold them for 500 gold each but people who didnt have time or were to lazy to walk 50 yards would pay my prices. I even had regulars who would buy stacks of carrots through mail for slightly less than my going rate.
I maxed out my gold and then quit the game giving my money to all my guildmates. I tend to quit a game when I have reached my goals and my goal was to get rich, then I had nothing I wanted to spend it on.

However in wow its impossible to control the market since everyone can do it and you can't set up sales in places where it would be more convenient to sell something other than the auction house. For example I made some sizeable gold setting up my character to sell level 14-20 gear in a zone that was far away from all the capital cities, characters would have to hoof it back to the cities because they did not have mounts yet at that level and it was the first zone that all 3 major cities would start grouping up in parties. Nobody wanted to walk all the way back every 2-3 levels for better gear. There was no mailbox out there either.

Hmm can Lotus be farmed anywhere with a reasonable drop-rate? Wowhead should be able to tell you, but if so, basic supply-and-demand says the farmers will be out to take a profit, and demand may drop as people switch to farming rather than buying on the AH... Also you can count on a good few people who have some lotuses lying around to be out to take advantage, so you'd be wise to anticipate a supply surge after you make your move, which will test resolve and resources.

Hmm can Lotus be farmed anywhere with a reasonable drop-rate? Wowhead should be able to tell you, but if so, basic supply-and-demand says the farmers will be out to take a profit, and demand may drop as people switch to farming rather than buying on the AH... Also you can count on a good few people who have some lotuses lying around to be out to take advantage, so you'd be wise to anticipate a supply surge after you make your move, which will test resolve and resources.

It's farmed at the Sunsong Ranch... each of my characters get 2-8 per day. I have six farming and average 30-ish lotus.